Preparation and properties of organosoluble,colorless, and high‐pretilt‐angle polyimides based on an alicyclic dianhydride and long‐main‐chain alkyl‐group‐containing diamines

Alicyclic polyimides (PIs) were prepared from 3‐carboxylmethyl‐cyclopentane‐1,2,4‐tricarboxylic acid dianhydride and α,ω‐di(4‐aminophenoxyl)alkanes. These PIs possessed good solubility in aprotic, strongly polar solvents such as N‐methyl‐2‐pyrrolidone, N,N‐dimethylacetamide, N,N‐dimethyl formamide, and m‐cresol. They possessed high transparency in visible wavelengths and were almost colorless. The pretilt angle of a liquid‐crystal display with these PIs as the alignment layer increased linearly as the length of the alkyloxy groups increased; it was close to 5° for the PI samples PI‐10 and PI‐12. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 81: 2814–2820, 2001